Children of Light and Children of Darkness
03-09-2025
When Melvin Rogers went looking for insight about politics today, he skipped over his old friend John Dewey and chose Reinhold Niebuhr. Rogers' early writing was on Dewey who he sees as “the champion of democratic hope.” But Rogers found in Niebuhr a “hard-nosed realist” who “understood power.” What is more, Niebuhr was aware that the revolutionary movements of the 1930s, both Christian Social Gospel and the Progressive left, underestimated and ignored “the depth of human self-interest and the structural entrenchment of power.” In his 1932 book Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr saw that failing liberalism and rising fascism could be fought neither by “moral reasoning nor procedural safeguards.” The reality of “the tide of self-interest and power politics” needed to be resisted by power and not simply by rhetoric or procedures.
Much as Hannah Arendt, Niebuhr sees that power is a reality in politics and not simply a negative. For Arendt, politics can marshall the power of collective action to pursue common goals. And yes, power can and often will be corrupted. Which is why the best way to resist destructive, criminal, and self-interested expressions of political power is to nurture and develop alternative sources of power that aim to ennoble and elevate citizens and call them to the service of a public interest.
After WWII Niebuhr published The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness in which the two poles represent opposing political orientations.
In Niebuhr’s view, the children of light are those who believe democratic progress is an inescapable development, supported by democratic means. This idea has taken many forms in American political thought, and one of its most recent expressions is found in the contemporary Democratic Party’s commitment to pluralism.
Rogers seeks to extend Niebuhr’s metaphor to contemporary politics, arguing that Democrats aim for pluralism and Republicans appeal to authoritarianism. This may well underestimate the authoritarian impulses in the Democratic Party that have led so many moderates and working class people to ally themselves with the Republicans even when they dislike President Trump. It is rare that either Party in politics escapes the seductions of dogma and self-interest. What Niebuhr reminds us, however, is that the reality of darkness and dogma are part of democratic politics. As Rogers writes, Niebuhr understood that “democracy is the best form of government precisely because it takes human nature seriously. Democracy, he contends, is built on the paradoxical assumption that while human beings are prone to selfishness, they also possess the capacity for self-transcendence.” Rogers writes:
Niebuhr, however, was deeply skeptical of any vision of politics that rested on inevitability. While he was not immune to the idea that individuals and societies could strive for something beyond themselves, he knew that democratic progress was never simply a function of time—it required the contestation of power. He understood something that many of today’s Democrats fail to grasp: history does not bend toward justice on its own. Without a counterforce that actively channels the anxieties and aspirations of the public, the forces of reaction do not fade—they regroup, recalibrate, and return with greater force.
Today, Niebuhr’s warnings about forces that regroup and endanger democracy feel eerily prescient. Trump’s return to power represents the persistence of authoritarian tendencies within American life and the failure of democratic institutions to check these forces adequately. Trump’s rise was not the product of economic anxiety or cultural grievance alone, but their toxic fusion—where fears of economic decline were weaponized into racial resentments, and democracy itself was hijacked as an instrument for exclusionary power. As Niebuhr warned, democratic institutions are both the cause and consequence of cultural pluralism. Yet, their openness can also be manipulated to restore what he calls a “primitive unity,” one that suppresses difference through coercion. Trump’s current use of executive orders and the unchecked workings of the Department of Government Efficiency are only the beginning of a broader system of coercion under his administration.
If Moral Man and Immoral Society teaches us that justice requires the mobilization of countervailing power, then The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness reminds us that democratic values must be actively cultivated and defended, or they will be captured and deformed. Trump’s presidency thrives on exhaustion and despair; it depends on people surrendering to cynicism because resistance and fighting seem to mark the failures rather than the beginnings of democratic politics. Niebuhr offers a different vision—one that acknowledges the depth of the crisis but refuses to give in to nihilism and does so because democratic politics is about fighting for better forms of life.
Criticizing Trump and the Republican Party does not necessitate naivety regarding the failures of the Democratic Party. The Democrats have not consistently prioritized the economically disinherited—a class that transcends race—in their pursuits. This, of course, stems partly from their own closeness to an economic oligarchic class. However, the Democratic Party is less cruel and vicious precisely because it allows for criticism of its organizing and power usage. It is the very role of criticism in a democracy that President Trump is swiftly attempting to undermine or demonize.